CC. Australia/New Zealand PR Campaign of the Year

Winner

Campaign Title

Westpac App Challenge

Client

Westpac New Zealand

Agency

Westpac was not perceived as a digital leader in the New Zealand market and while a number of innovations were planned and being worked on they were still at least 12 months away from being in market. The need for change was underlined by a survey of 800 New Zealanders the media team organised that showed 41 per cent believed mobile will be the main way of banking within three years and 66 per cent believed it will be the case in five years. In such a quickly changing and competitive environment the business needed to start repositioning itself immediately.

The Westpac Media Team originated and executed the ‘Westpac App Challenge’, a crowdsourcing competition for mobile banking apps. Westpac issued an open call to New Zealand software developers and designers, asking them to think as bank customers to identify a pain point they had then create a mobile app to make that process, transaction, application or any other common banking activity easier, faster and safer for our customers. Two winners would receive a cash prize and the opportunity to work with Westpac while their concept was developed and brought to market. The winners would retain their intellectual property rights so they could leverage the completed app anywhere else in the world after it had been launched locally. The campaign covered 12 weeks and included three stages – set up, drive for entries, and the judging process. Each stage was designed to present PR opportunities. The campaign required strong relationship management across multiple business units internally (legal, IT and digital teams, internal communications etc) as well as with multiple external stakeholders. A multi-channel communications approach using online, social and traditional media was developed.

The Westpac App Challenge exceeded expectations reaching an overall audience of more than 2.5 million people through traditional, online and social media channels. The App Challenge portal on Westpac’s website attracted 57,695 visits making it the most visited non-product or service page on the company’s main website during the campaign period.

Honourable Mention

Campaign Title

The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented

Client

Save Our Sons

Agency

Red Agency

Save Our Sons is an Australian charity dedicated to raising awareness and funds for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare and fatal muscle degenerative disease that affects 1 in 3,500 boys worldwide. The charity wanted to approach the Australian government, to match monies already raised ($1.75million) to fund imperative clinical trials. For this they needed to gain the support of the Australian public, but the charity and disease itself lacked national awareness.

The Most Powerful Arm Ever Invented was created to capture public interest and support for the cause. With no budget behind the campaign, disseminating key messages about the disease and the call to action relied solely on PR. The strategy was to use Australian earned media channels to tell the story of DMD sufferers and drive people to the robot arm for immediate action. Key media targets were identified across TV, radio, online and print, as well as parenting, lifestyle, technology and health verticals and social media.

Following the campaign, a pharmaceutical company agreed to commence clinical trials with funds raised to date, rather than waiting for the total sum required from government.